At its recent meeting, the USPA Board approved a new Basic Safety Requirement that applies a minimum age requirement to all skydiving equipment. Now, all skydives must be made in accordance with the specific manufacturer’s age requirement for each component used for the jump, including the main and reserve canopies, harness and container, automatic activation device and accessories. This requirement was previously only applied to tandem equipment. According to the Parachute Industry Association, whose representatives brought this request to the USPA Board, all of the U.S. equipment manufacturers that PIA represents require users of their equipment to be the age of legal majority. -USPA Update

Is this really a problem in the industry that needs addressing? And who's it protecting? It the USPA wanted to protect it's self they could have simply made the minimum age of membership to be 18 years old.

THis serves to protect DZO's and is one more indication of the focus of the BOD.

Where's the wingloading guideline BSR? Where is the camera use BSR? What is really going on?

The gear manufacturers. It lets them set a minimum age so they're less likely to pay civil suit damages when an underage person hurts themselves and sues.

There's nothing to stop them from doing that WITHOUT the USPA. Put it on the warning label and the user's manual. "Hey you need to be XX years old before you use this." Works for other human conditions like weight.

At its recent meeting, the USPA Board approved a new Basic Safety Requirement that applies a minimum age requirement to all skydiving equipment. Now, all skydives must be made in accordance with the specific manufacturer’s age requirement for each component used for the jump, including the main and reserve canopies, harness and container, automatic activation device and accessories. This requirement was previously only applied to tandem equipment. According to the Parachute Industry Association, whose representatives brought this request to the USPA Board, all of the U.S. equipment manufacturers that PIA represents require users of their equipment to be the age of legal majority. -USPA Update

The motion was: Add to section 2-1.D [Age Requirements] 2. All skydives must be conducted in accordance with the specific manufacturer's age requirements for each component of the parachute, harness and container, AAD and accessories used for that jump.

- delete section SIM 2-1 E.4.c.(5)

This section [SIM 2-1 E.4.c.(5)] read: "(5) All student tandem skydives must be conducted in accordance with the specific manufacturer’s age requirements for the tandem system used for that jump."

The age requirements are on the user of the equipment, not on the equipment itself.

The new BSR is a generalization of the previous BSR in two directions. 1. It goes from student tandem jumps to all jumps. 2. It goes from tandem equipment to 'each component of the parachute, harness and container, AAD and accessories used for that jump'.

The new BSR also reiterates common USPA recommendations that say: ~follow the manufacturer's instructions, guidance and requirements

USPA is not setting any user age requirements. The mfg may or may not do that. Some of them are doing that now. All USPA is saying is to 'do what the mfg says to do.'

At its recent meeting, the USPA Board approved a new Basic Safety Requirement that applies a minimum age requirement to all skydiving equipment. Now, all skydives must be made in accordance with the specific manufacturer’s age requirement for each component used for the jump, including the main and reserve canopies, harness and container, automatic activation device and accessories. This requirement was previously only applied to tandem equipment. According to the Parachute Industry Association, whose representatives brought this request to the USPA Board, all of the U.S. equipment manufacturers that PIA represents require users of their equipment to be the age of legal majority. -USPA Update

Quote:

USPA is not setting any user age requirements. The mfg may or may not do that. Some of them are doing that now. All USPA is saying is to 'do what the mfg says to do.'

Thank you for that clarification, MIH.

I have visited PIA's website, but can't distinguish between those U.S. manufacturers PIA "represents", and those manufacturers who have a relationship of another nature with PIA.

What could possibly be the mindset for this BSR? It protects only a very small portion of the membership (if the manufacturers are members) and it exposes the USPA to the chain of liability.

This gets USPA out of the liability issue of under-age jumpers.

If some lawsuit is filed that claims Junior Jumper jumped abc equipment and that equipment had a user age restriction, then USPA can be dismissed from the lawsuit easier because USPA has a BSR that says 'follow what the mfg says about user age restrictions.'

For most of the equipment out in the field today this BSR has no effect since there are no user age restrictions on most existing equipment. There are a couple of mfgs that have recently (within the last year or so) put in user age restrictions. This only applies to that equipment and any equipment in the future that may have a mfg imposed user age restriction.

What could possibly be the mindset for this BSR? It protects only a very small portion of the membership (if the manufacturers are members) and it exposes the USPA to the chain of liability.

This gets USPA out of the liability issue of under-age jumpers.

If some lawsuit is filed that claims Junior Jumper jumped abc equipment and that equipment had a user age restriction, then USPA can be dismissed from the lawsuit easier because USPA has a BSR that says 'follow what the mfg says about user age restrictions.'

For most of the equipment out in the field today this BSR has no effect since there are no user age restrictions on most existing equipment. There are a couple of mfgs that have recently (within the last year or so) put in user age restrictions. This only applies to that equipment and any equipment in the future that may have a mfg imposed user age restriction.

.

Weak argument at best.

The manufacturers have stepped into the world of the non-student jumper. A 19 year-old jumper who buys gear in CA cannot legally jump it in the state of MS, and somehow the gear manufacturers have pawned off to USPA the responsibility of enforcing their rules to protect them. This does nothing to keep USPA out of a lawsuit because it would be easy to demonstrate how unenforceable it is.

This is a BLR... Basic Liability Restructuring and does not belong in the BSRs.

And the way this is worded, ANY manufacturer is free to retroactively put ANY age restriction on ANY gear-user jumping gear in ANY way on ANY skydive.

And there is no way to know what components have what age restrictions. So, a DZ may be letting someone break a BSR without knowing it, then when there is a problem, the DZ is hung out to dry for not enforcing a BSR.

I agree with you Craig and viamently opposed this BSR. The problem is we now gave all of the power to every component manufacturer to determine the age of a US skydiver. There was absolutely no statistical data to support getting involved in this.

What really happend was last meeting we argued for hours upon hours about the Tandem age requirement. After exhausting efforts and problems we decided to make it a BSR to follow age requirements for Tandem jumps ONLY!!! The manufactureres (Ted, Bill) wanted this for all jumps and we rejected it for AFF, IAD, Static line, only giving in to tandems. Arguably the highest liability risk to them. Now 6 monthes later they came back to us wanting the full monty again and we crumbled. So for the history of USPA a 16 year old could get certified via one of several methods and go on to compete at the highest level and now that is gone. Unless they use a rig and components that do not have an age requirement.

This did not make sense to me, rather we should have made the camera 200 jump requirement a BSR. I was really outvoted on that one. Some even suggested 25 jumps, A license as a recommendation. Rich Winstock

What you don't think there is any risk in Cessna, piper or schweizer being sued in any sailplane operations if little 14 yr old johnny crashes on his solo or other flights.

Sorry it's lame as hell for USPA to be passing this type of BSR, knocking out under age tandems is one thing, changing how a great deal of us learned to jump is another, there is no reason a 16 yr old can't SL or AFF, in fact I bet the records will show very few have ever sued after the fact once they turned 18 or 19 in some states.

Also its kind of funny that some of those who have been bitching the loudest have had no problem taking their own underage kids on tandem jumps... guess it's a do as we say and not as we do kind of thing.

What could possibly be the mindset for this BSR? It protects only a very small portion of the membership (if the manufacturers are members) and it exposes the USPA to the chain of liability.

This gets USPA out of the liability issue of under-age jumpers.

If some lawsuit is filed that claims Junior Jumper jumped abc equipment and that equipment had a user age restriction, then USPA can be dismissed from the lawsuit easier because USPA has a BSR that says 'follow what the mfg says about user age restrictions.'

For most of the equipment out in the field today this BSR has no effect since there are no user age restrictions on most existing equipment. There are a couple of mfgs that have recently (within the last year or so) put in user age restrictions. This only applies to that equipment and any equipment in the future that may have a mfg imposed user age restriction.

.

Weak argument at best.

The manufacturers have stepped into the world of the non-student jumper. A 19 year-old jumper who buys gear in CA cannot legally jump it in the state of MS, and somehow the gear manufacturers have pawned off to USPA the responsibility of enforcing their rules to protect them. This does nothing to keep USPA out of a lawsuit because it would be easy to demonstrate how unenforceable it is.

This is a BLR... Basic Liability Restructuring and does not belong in the BSRs.

And the way this is worded, ANY manufacturer is free to retroactively put ANY age restriction on ANY gear-user jumping gear in ANY way on ANY skydive.

And there is no way to know what components have what age restrictions. So, a DZ may be letting someone break a BSR without knowing it, then when there is a problem, the DZ is hung out to dry for not enforcing a BSR.

This is wrong on soooo many levels.

top

Exactly!

We discussed this on the board 4 years ago and the wisdom at the time was that it was a bad idea, and the majority of the board was against it.

I wonder what changed?

No more BSR's! We have enough already and many are either ignored or not enforced at all.

As this action clearly demonstrates it is not too difficult to enact a new BSR. But, once in place they are next to impossible to revoke. If I am not mistaken that has never happened.